Never Again
By Jennifer Haynes

It was raining. I was alone. The sky was black and I couldn’t see the clouds. It looked as though the water was coming from a huge nothingness that was looming above me. A nothingness that was me.

I couldn’t remember who I was, and I certainly didn’t know where I was. All I knew was that I was in a large city, but nobody was around. It was completely deserted and lightless.

I was not disturbed at the fact that I had no clue about my location. It seemed like it had happened before. I would go out and get drunk, and the next time I woke up, I was usually in some weird place. After I would make my way home with one hell of a hang over, I would hear about drugs, sex, and fights I didn’t remember having.
But never had I not known who I was, and I also never had ended up in such a strange place. I couldn’t understand why I could remember abstract memories like that, yet know no specifics about myself. Strangely, my last memory was not of going out and getting a drink, but of riding my bike for a nighttime ride.

Something had happened though, for I was slightly limping and my right eye was bruised shut. My clothes were torn and I was cold.

I could hear the rain falling around me in a rhythmic pattering sound, but it was the only sound I heard. I looked up at the skyscrapers and houses and there were no lights on. No cars were driving down the streets. The air had an eerie quality, almost a dead quality, and the pace of my heart quickened as I walked on blindly.

More memories started coming back. My boyfriend had left me the night I went bike riding. I had been torn apart and the feeling started to come back. My bill collectors were hassling me to make payments and I had wanted to disappear. I went on the bike ride to outrun my troubles, but I also remembered I had been suicidal. The feeling was frightening, and I hadn’t been sure if I really wanted to do that so I went riding through the city to make a decision.

Did I want to cut myself or do something more spectacular like jump off a building? I had feared hurting my family so decided to turn home…

Then I recognized the place I was walking through. It was my city, except no one was here. But what had happened to me? Had I been hit by a truck or something?

Suddenly, I saw a man jump from behind a trash can out in front of me. I recognized his evil face right away. When I went riding, he had raped me. I remembered him ripping off my clothes and hitting me and hurting me, and when I pleaded for him to stop he wouldn’t…he only laughed. Now he was here to do it again…

Out of fear and anger I grabbed a gun I had been carrying all along and shot him in the head as I screamed. It echoed through the empty alleys, and so did the gunshot.

The man stood with a hole in his head and looked at me. “What, you don’t like me?” he asked.

In a moment of panic I turned the gun on my head and fired. I couldn’t go through that humiliation and pain again. There was an explosion and everything disappeared.

“Time of death,” a doctor said, “9 pn. She didn’t come out of the coma.”

4-30-98